These items caught my eye – 6 April 2013

Each week, I’ll pull together a range of items that have attracted my attention. I hope you will find the variety of topics covered both interesting and enlightening. If you follow a site that is, maybe, a bit off the beaten track and think it would be of interest, please contact me and I’ll take a look._____________________________________________

Rupert Wyndham is an eloquent treasure. For those who have not already seen this (and I’ve received many emails about it) — Enjoy! — His turn of phrase is something to behold: the damning indictments carefully understated, yet laid bare. That the Royal Society President has been reduced to ad hominem attacks “… demonstrates more clearly than anything else the loss of dignity it has endured and depths of corruption to which it has been reduced under your stewardship and those of your two predecessors.”

If “constant growth” is bad, why does the David Suzuki Foundation keep getting bigger and bigger?

According to eco zealots, growth is a bad thing because it increases our environmental footprint. On page 2 of his latest book, David Suzuki complains that our economic system is

based on constant growth and ever-expanding exploitation of finite resources on a finite planet.

At the beginning of a chapter titled Is the Economy…Stupid? he talks about our “current economic paradigm” and “what an economy is supposed to do.” He declares that our “economic system is a human invention that can be modified, improved or changed to suit our needs” and reiterates:

It’s absurd that we still rely on a recently devised economic system based on endless growth when we live on a finite planet.

Err, reality check time. Suzuki is a geneticist by training. I’m aware of no evidence that he has taken a single course in economics. Many people in this world have PhDs in that field. They’ve spent decades exploring the nuances of economic theory. Suzuki is not one of them. He is as much an amateur in economics as I am in genetics.